Week 3 - Artist research:

This week I have decided to do some artist research to help find links with my own work as well as give me ideas as to how to present my final body of work.

The first artist I am looking into is Marina Abramovic. She is known as the 'grandmother' of performance art and that is because she has been producing performance art work for three decades. She has created pieces of work that are full of sentimentality and connections such as her piece 'Inponderabilia' (1977), as well as created pieces of work that are to shock the audience, i.e. her piece 'Art must be beautiful', where she physically brushes her hair violently, pulling hair out of head with sharp brushing movements.

I think her work can relate to me in the sense my performance art pieces within my video are to create sentimentality through metaphors like Abramovic does within her work. I may not express such sentimental approaches in the nude but I do use the same sense of motifs and metaphors like she does within her work.

The second artist I am looking into is Bruce Nauman. Bruce Nauman is most known for his phenomenal piece of performance work 'Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around The Perimeter of a Square', which he experimented with in his own studio by mapping out on the floor where he was going to walk and exaggerating that shape through his own movement and his body language. He is now known for his work with lights and colour. But I am mainly focusing on his performance based work as I feel through simple movement he exaggerates the movement within it as well as the shape he is walking which in some ways I am doing within my own work. I have used body language to suggest more into what there is just like Nauman and his square. The simplicity element lies in both of our work when considering my simple performance elements and his simplicity of just walking in a square.

The third artist I have looked at is Sophie Calle. Her work definitely relates to mine when considering two pieces of her work: 'The Shadow' (1981), and 'Room 43'. Her 'shadow' piece of work can relate to the motif I have created in my video of following my mother her dog while they walk around Shipley Park, as in this piece Calle was followed and photographed also. Her piece about 'Room 43' shows her photographing found objects front the people staying in the hotel, which is similar to my approach of recording the object around my mothers house that were from my grandmother, showing a similar approach of investigating. 

The fourth artist I have looked at is Laure Prouvost, Turner Prize winner. My use of video can be seen to be similar to her style. Her use of jump cuts, her videoing herself rummaging through objects, using performance as the director as well as participant in her videos, can be seen in some ways in my video. Her use of installation around her work where she creates a scene is something I would like to achieve in some way to create the feel of being there, of being lifted from where you are into the video itself. I really admire her work, she is certainly an inspiration within my work as well. I especially like her Turner Prize winning piece 'Wantee', which has a lovely use of narration that can again relate to my work as I am hoping to use some kind of narration for my final video as well.

The fifth and final artist I have looked at is Tacita Dean. My use of video can be seen to relate to her piece of work 'Teignmouth Electron' in terms of focusing on one particular shot in order to tell a bigger story. In my case my focus shot is the walking sequence I have created of the first walk around Shipley Park after my grandmother past away. It shows this image in a harsher way in Dean's piece with the wrecked boat, decaying over time, abandoned all together, which can be seen in a lighter manner in my walking sequence, especially through Lincoln Kirstein's theory of tender cruelty. This can be seen in my walking sequence and Dean's piece of work through the soft quality of the image but the decaying meaning behind it.